The present invention relates generally to a device, method and system for delivering audio and/or visual messages, and, particularly, but not exclusively, to a device, method and system for delivering messages for marketing purposes.
Methods and devices for marketing are well known. They include advertising through communications media, billboard advertising, point of sale advertising (i.e. labelling, posters in retail outlets, etc) and many others.
One of the most important requisites for any advertisement is "effectiveness". Where effectiveness is defined by efficiency, impact and sales generation. An advertisement should be able to communicate to the target audience, for each specific product or service advertised, information that will sway their decision to a specific product category, service or brand, at the point where the product is purchased.
In order to achieve the above, an advertisement must have clarity, in terms of the quality of the message being delivered, efficiency in terms of generating the greatest number of sales on given advertising expenditure, and impact in terms of the advertisers ability to generate emotion within the purchaser, when the purchaser is making the purchase decision. Impact can be significantly increased where the message being delivered, is delivered at the moment in time within the consumers decision making process where it is most likely to generate the maximum number of sales.
Thus, the better an advertisement is at delivering a message, the better it is able to convey an emotion and generate a response, and the better an advertisement is positioned, (i.e., when the advertisement should be communicated) the greater the effectiveness of the advertisement, leading to greater sales of product.
The present applicants believe that impact can be increased by first of all establishing that a person or persons is likely to be interested in a particular product or service and then delivering a message to that person in audio and/or visual form. The message would not be delivered unless the determination that the person is interested has been made. The impact may be further increased by having the message "hidden" until it is determined that it should be delivered. By "hidden" the applicants mean that the message may not be perceivable to a person until it has been determined that that person is worth delivering the message to.
Impact and effectiveness can further be increased by being able to determine what point in time within each consumers decision making process, is the most effective point in time to be able to maximise effectiveness and thus generate the greatest response for any given advertisement.
A number of prior art devices attempt to detect the presence of a person and to deliver a message to the person on detection of their presence. The problem with the majority of such devices, however, is that they do not operate to discriminate between people detected by the device. The message will be delivered whether or not the person has indicated any particular interest in the message or whether or not the person would be likely to be interested in the message. This lessens the impact of the message.
No prior art devices have the ability to be able to deliver to a person a logical sequence of messages from start to finish. Where prior art devices exist which do deliver a sequence of audio and/or video messages, the devices are usually set to cycle through the sequence regardless of whether or not a person is present. Persons interacting with such devices will often approach a device while it is part way through its message cycle. The information will therefore mean very little to them or will be confusing. No prior art device exists which can ensure that a message sequence is delivered from the beginning of the message sequence on approach of a person.
No prior art device demonstrates the capability to be able to adjust specific timing of message delivery to be able to deliver to the purchaser the message at the point of time at which the message is likely to have the greatest effect.
Further, marketing of a particular product or products is often conducted by way of organised marketing campaigns. A client or retailer will often require a product in a retail area to be associated with a particular marketing advertisement, which advertisement may be updated from time to time. At present, there is no convenient way of automatically delivering and updating point of sale marketing campaigns, nor any convenient way of obtaining information on the effect of point of sale marketing campaigns. There is no device which enables a client to be able to evaluate their own point of sales campaigns, in terms of the ability for the point of sale campaign to generate interest, stopping customers, within retail, or other environment.